


1-11 Arcade Mania

by iippo



Series: Steven Universe Renaissance [11]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:13:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25823446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iippo/pseuds/iippo
Summary: Steven takes his fellow Crystal Gem to Funland Arcade, where Amethyst learns the allure of video games.
Series: Steven Universe Renaissance [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1796686
Kudos: 8





	1-11 Arcade Mania

**Author's Note:**

> An alternative universe. See series page for details.

The Crystal Gems, protectors of the Earth, were walking along an abandoned crystal path in a cave. Amethyst was leading the way and she was followed by Steven Universe. He was wearing a warm winter jacket that made a swishy sound when he walked. The cave’s crystal structure amplified the noise.

Amethyst was trying to listen for any clues what lay ahead, and eventually got frustrated. She turned to Steven and whispered in annoyance: “Steven, this is a stealth mission! You're making too much noise. You gotta take off the jacket.”

“Uhh, I thought you said it was a _health_ mission – I don't wanna catch a cold,” he defended his choice of clothing, not wanting to reveal the true reason he wore the jacket with the most pockets.

“Umm, then why are you still wearing sandals?” Amethyst asked.

Steven looked at his feet and the sandals he was wearing. He deflected the question: “I can be quiet. See?” He stuck out his arms it to a t-pose so that his jacket wouldn’t make noise when he walked. “Stealth.”

“C'mon then.”

They walked for a while and soon the swishing noise started again. Amethyst was cross and turned around again to address Steven, who was still sticking his arms out.

“It wasn't me!” He defended himself again. They heard a sound, as if something scuttered past them at great speed and as he tried to follow the direction of the sound to see what it was, Steven spun on his feet a little too forcefully and the ledge under his feet gave way.

“Aaaahhh!” Steven yelled as he desperately spun his arms around to regain his balance.

Amethyst turned and saw what was happening. “Steven!” She yelled in a whisper.

Steven – misunderstanding Amethyst’s call for being chided for the noise again – stopped yelling and straightened his arms out. “Stealth,” he whispered.

And with that Steven fell over the edge and plunged into the darkness screaming. But he didn’t hit the bottom, as Amethyst had quickly summoned her whip and managed to catch him with it. After a mutual moment of “phew” she lowered him to the bottom of the cavern, and jumped down to join him.

They heard the swishing noise again, and soon a huge monster slithered out from a round hole in the cave wall. It looked like a dark blob with five tentacle-like arms. Its bright turquoise backside was covered in gem-like facets and spikes, and its dark turquoise underside had a drill that it had used to make the hole it came out of.

“Oh good, stealth wasn’t necessary after all,” Amethyst said brightly.

The monster fired a round of spikes from its back at them, which Amethyst dodged skilfully, while at the same time pulling, pushing and lifting Steven out of harm’s way as needed.

“Come on poofy,” Amethyst said and picked Steven up and moved away a few paces. She set Steven down behind an outcropping of rock and spin-dashed towards the enemy.

Amethyst was much faster than the monster’s stretchy arms, which were trying to catch her. Steven watched in awe and cheered her on. She rolled under the monster which unwound its drill into five more smaller arms to hit her with. The purple gem parried the punches of the smaller arms, slashed one of them off with a flick of her hair, grabbed another under her arm to hold it still, and summoned her whip. She loaded her whip with violet energy and slapped the monster directly into the vulnerable mouth-opening in the middle of the drill-arms. A purple explosion tore through the monster and disrupted its physical body. All that was left was a spherical multi-faceted gem with spikes all over it, as well as the smaller spikes that had covered the upper parts of the monster’s body which were raining down all around Amethyst.

Steven was amazed. “Wow! You’re so fast! Amethyst, you're amazing! How'd you even do that?”

Amethyst picked up the gem, bubbled it, and sent it away. She turned to Steven with a smile.

But before she managed to say anything, Steven noticed the spikes on the floor. “Look! The little ones didn't explode!” And as they watched the spikes began to burrow into the ground. “They're drilling away!” Steven alerted.

“I got it!” Amethyst said and jumped high in the air, diving head first into the much-too-small-for-her hole like a fox hunting in snow, getting herself stuck.

Steven watched her feet kicking in the air for a minute before pulling her out of the hole.

“Ugh, I swallowed a rock,” Amethyst complained as she emerged.

“What should we do?” Steven asked.

“Ehh, we can just let them go,” Amethyst answered. “They're just parasites. If they want to be a problem, they'll have to answer to me.”

She headed out and Steven watched her with stars in his eyes. “So coool,” he whispered to himself, and ran after her, jacket swishing loudly. The noise of Steven’s clothes covered the quieter swishing sound of small drill parasite boring through the crystal walls of the cave.

\- - -

When the two gems made it back to Beach City, Steven cleared his throat.

“We both worked so hard, I think we deserve a reward,” he announced, walking ahead of Amethyst.

“Sounds like you have something in mind,” Amethyst said with a grin.

Steven started giggling and dancing, making his jacket jingle. He turned around and walked backwards a few steps. “I'm taking you to the best place in Beach City! Funland Arcade!”

“Um, don't you need money for that place?” Amethyst asked. Despite how hard they worked, they weren’t exactly getting paid.

“Oh, don't worry. This one's on... meeee!” Steven yelled and unzipped his jacket, revealing his pockets full of quarters and the reason he had worn the jacket in the first place. The light from the setting sun hit the stacks of legal tender in an angle, reflecting the light into Amethyst’s face, so that she had to shield her eyes from the glimmering coins.

They stepped inside the Arcade, and with a wide flourish of his arm Steven announced: “Welcome to a wonderland of funtronic gameventions!” He laughed. There weren’t very many patrons in the establishment – just Onion and his older brother Sour Cream – so Steven and Amethyst had their pick of the place.

Amethyst had been in the Arcade before, but since she didn’t tend to ever have any human money, she hadn’t actually ever gotten to play any of the games. They glanced at each other and grinned.

“Man, where should we start?” Amethyst asked, excited.

“How about... Road Killer?” Steven pointed the nearest machine, which was a racing game.

They sat down in the drivers’ seats, inserted the money, picked their cars, and went for it. Amethyst grinned like a maniac as she crashed into everything and won all the points. Her quicksilver reflexes made her excellent at the game. Steven was impressed and cheered her on.

Next up they hit the Teens of Rage. They paid up, selected their fighters – Steven recommended Amethyst play as Joe Rock – and started the fight. Amethyst started out by just punching as fast as she could (which was pretty fast), but soon she figured out how to use all the character’s moves tactically, and even discovered the special moves. Steven came in second again, and cheered Amethyst. He was glad she was having so much fun.

Next they moved over to Skee-Ball.

“You roll the ball and try to get it into the holes, and then you can even win tickets for prizes,” Steven explained and pointed to the ticket booth, where Onion was turning in a pile of tickets to Mr. Smiley behind the counter. Mr. Smiley handed him a small moped, and Onion fell over under its weight.

“Woah, Onion's the ticket master!” Steven admired.

“Cool!” Amethyst said with a mean grin, feeling intensely competitive.

Steven inserted the coins and Amethyst took the balls. She was playing well, but she soon became frustrated that she wasn’t scoring in the hole that awarded the highest points.

“Uhh, Steven, how about you take the tickets and pick a prize while I play another round?” Amethyst proposed and Steven agreed, giving her the quarter to get a new set of balls from the machine.

Steven came back with two sticks of candy and found Amethyst straddling the outer ring of the Skee-Ball machine and dropping the balls directly into the highest scoring hole. A massive pile of tickets was building up at the foot of the machine.

“What are you doing?!” Steven yelled, horrified. He thought he had been very clear on how the game was played.

“Imma win a airplane!” Amethyst declared.

“That's cheating! You're gonna get us in so much trouble!” Steven panicked and pulled Amethyst away, leaving the tickets behind for an opportunistic Onion to claim. Amethyst’s mood soured a little; she couldn’t understand why Steven objected to her winning.

They got to the farthest corner of the arcade and Steven checked to see that Mr. Smiley wasn’t following them. He looked around and spotted another game they could try.

“Oh... uhm, how about we play that one? Meat Beat Mania. There's no prizes in this game. You just shake the meat, to the beat.” He handed Amethyst the ham controllers, while picking up the chicken drumsticks of player two for himself. The game screen instructed them how to move the controllers and doing so correctly scored points.

They played the game in two-player mode, and once again Amethyst was a natural. Her sense of rhythm and gem flexibility were stout advantages and soon Steven was out of the game.

“Keep going, you’re doing great!” Steven encouraged her to not stop, and she didn’t need much coaxing. Even the game kept encouraging her with little interjections like “keep it up, well done!” and “now you’re cooking!”

Steven wanted to join the game and searched his pockets for more quarters – with no luck. They were fresh out. “Uhh, keep playing, I’ll be right back!” Steven told Amethyst, who barely acknowledged his words; she was so enthralled with the rhythm.

Steven ran along the beach and into his house. He rummaged for a moment and found what he was looking for: his trusty Metal Mutt. He wielded the dog-shaped metal detector triumphantly and ran outside to comb the beach for quarters.

After a moment the Metal Mutt started barking and Steven dug in the sand and found a coin. “Aw, silver dollar? Useless!” He grumbled disappointed and threw the coin away. “Come on.”

“This better not be another cat,” Steven muttered as the metal detector alerted again, this time further down the beach – he dug and found another Metal Mutt. “Double dogs!” Steven rejoiced. Both metal detectors barked, and Steven glanced down at the sand. “Quarters!” He rejoiced and went to pick up the change.

But instead of getting to pick up a coin, Steven himself got picked: the round shape on the sand turned out to be hiding a creature that attached itself to Steven’s hand.

“Waaahhhh!” Steven yelled and flailed around in a panic. “Aaaaahhh! Help!”

The flailing worked and the creature became loose from Steven’s hand and flew upwards. When he noticed it was gone he stopped flailing and looked up.

The star-shaped creature ascended high up to the zenith until its upward momentum slowed down. Then it wound its arms around into a drill point and took aim at Steven.

Steven screamed when he realised he was under attacked and managed to dodge out of the drill parasite’s way. He picked up the Metal Mutt and prepared for the reappearance of the creature.

Unfortunately Steven was not prepared for the creature _and_ its backup: where one drill parasite had vanished into the sand, three hopped out and hovered in the air in star-shape, before taking the drill form and attacking.

Steven swung the metal detector at the creatures. Two of them missed him and one of them he got with the Metal Mutt – destroying the metal detector in the process. The two surviving creatures plunged into the sand, and four came out. Steven found himself outnumbered and unarmed, and legged it.

The drill parasites were about to make Swiss cheese out of Steven, but he tripped over a rock and fell just as the creatures would have made contact, leaving him unharmed as they flew overhead. They turned to attack again, and Steven’s bubble shield activated.

Hundreds of drill parasites were now flying in every direction, punching holes in the rockface, ricocheting off of the bubble as Steven rolled towards the Boardwalk as fast as he could.

“Amethyst! Amethyst!” Steven yelled, but his voice was muffled by the bubble and didn’t carry for squat.

He rolled inside the arcade and his bubble dissipated. He saw Amethyst was still playing Meat Beat Mania, while Onion watched nearby with his moped.

“Amethyst!” Steven panted, out of breath and struggling.

“Oh hey Steven,” Amethyst mumbled, focusing on the game. Her concentration was absolute, her moves fast and fluid; it was a beautiful sight to behold. The game was chirping its food-punny encouragement at every point.

“Amethyst, you gotta come quick! The little guys are back an- ... and they’re a problem!” Steven tried to explain in between trying to catch his breath, but then his gaze was pulled to the screen of the game. “Whooaaa... I've never seen anyone get this far...” Steven admired, but then remembered the situation at hand and snapped out of it. “B-b-b-but you gotta come fight the monsters now.”

“That sounds good,” Amethyst agreed, not letting her eyes off the game.

“Uh, Amethyst? Amethyst, come on!” Steven started to get cross and he tried to push Amethyst. “Hey! This is serious!” He tried pulling her. She was solid like a rock and would not budge.

“Yeah, yeah, just a sec,” Amethyst said, still not looking away from the game.

“Amethyst! If you don’t stop playing this game I- I-“ Steven stuttered, frustrated that Amethyst wasn’t paying him any attention.

“I’M TELLING DAD!”

Amethyst stopped and looked at Steven, confused. “Greg?”

“You’re toast, Player One!” The game announced. Amethyst was on such a high level that even a split second loss of concentration caused her to miss a move and lose. Both Steven and Amethyst looked at the screen, which was flashing its demands for more coin in 30 seconds if the player wanted to continue where they left off.

“What the heck, dude?!” Amethyst demanded. She was really cross. “You made me lose!”

Steven was confused. “Lose? You were already way beyond anyone ever. See, you got the high score!” Amethyst looked at the screen asking her to enter three letters to signify her name.

But before either of them could even move towards the game console, a new volley of shots was heard outside. “The little guys!” Amethyst yelped and dashed outside, summoning whips for both hands in one fell swoop. Steven ran after her. “Go Amethyst go!” He cheered, watching Amethyst decimate the parasites in no time with the speed and accuracy of a sharp-shooter.


End file.
